Hello guys!!! I'm new to the forum and I see there's plenty of information!!! I just got a 98 Sentra GXE with almost 99000 and notice a small rattle coming from that side since day one. It reminds me of those old VW beatle, but not as loud. I've never done anything like this before, but the hell with it, I'll give it a try this saturday.Quick questions: Whats the best way to clean the tensioner cover before aplying the silicone?, Do I have to apply any silicone to the valve cover gasket? When tightening the bolts for the VCG do I have to follow any order? Same with the tensioner cover? How tight (I'm afraid of squeezing all of the silicone out).
Thanks,
you can use permatex grey rtv silicone, its the same kind of silicone nissan uses, you can use a scraper with a razor blade it works fine, just try to avoid gouging the mating surface, and yes use some on the valve cover, and if you need more info go to phatg20.net and go to downloads and get yourself a copy of the fsm (factory service manual) from there for your sentra.
I just completed replacing the upper tensioner on a 1995 Sentra GLE (1.6). I figured I would post instructions and pics to help people in the future. I have to say thanks to 'Kyu-ju-kue', 'tieggonzalez', and 'off_da_meter' for helping me get started and prviding advice on this one. My car has 233K on it and is still running strong, however it sounded like a tank. I though the entire timing chain would need to be replaced, but through the advice of people on this forum, I checked the upper timing chain tensioner. IT WAS TOTALLY SHOT. Cost of the tensioner was $55 from Advance, and total time spent was about 2 hrs. Hopefully I can leave the pics for these instructions on my server, however if someone wants to make them permanent here or add to them, feel free.
Let's get started:
Step 1: Remove the valve cover and move the Coolant Reservoir and Relay box out of the way. The reservoir (1) should just lift out. To remove the relay box (2), there are two screws that hold it in place. You may need to unplug a relay or two to get to the screws:
Shown are where the two screws are that hold the relay box. Now is a good time to remove the reservoir bracket (A). It'll give you room later.
Step 2: I moved the power steering reservoir out of the way (Screws 1,2,3). Next you will need to remove the engine mount bracket that attaches to the head. (Screws 4,5,6)
Step3: Support the Engine with a jack. (I placed mine under the oil pan). Remove the engine mount (Screws 1,2,3,4)
Step4: Remove the upper timing chain cover. There are a couple of nuts and 5 bolts.
YOU WILL GET DIRTY!!! (SHAMELESS PLUG......GO JACKETS!)
Step5: Now your upper chain cover should be removed. Inspect the tensioner and chain.
Here is the tensioner. Go ahead and remove it if it looks bad (Screws 1,2)
Mine was totally shot. There was no plastic left on the tensioner and the chain was eating into the metal (the cause of all the engine noise). Old and new tensioner shown.
Another view...see how it ate the metal (!?)
Step 6: Install new tensioner using the old bolts. Be sure to release the pin if your new tensioner came with one!
Step 7: Re-assembly is reverse of dissassembly. At the advice of some folks on this message board, I used RTV Gold to seal the upper tensioner cover. I just ran a bead similar to the factory bead that was on there. I had to monkey with the engine a bit to get the mount bolt back in. Nothing major, but if the hole doesn't line up perfectly, just push and tug on the engine and adjust the jack to get it to line up.
Hopefully this will help someone else. All in all, this took 2 hours of work.
Robert
I was reading the original post on taking the timing chain cover off. Says its just a few nuts and bolts. When I look into my Haynes book if you want to take the timing chain cover off you have to drain all fluids from the car and the crankshaft pully has to be removed.
If this is true wont I need to line up the heads by taking a wrench and turning the crankshaft to close the valves before it comes off?? And would I need a pully tool to take the crankshaft pully off??
Or do I even need to go this far or do all this????
I assume as well both belts would need to be taken off. Just seems like the is alot in the way in order to take the timing chain cover off according to the book.
Haven't had time to put the pix together for a post.
Took me 8 hours start to finish.
Not a bad job, but on my '94 Sentra, there was a small tiny, minor, slight problem to be overcome.
Everything went fine up to the point where the chain has to be removed. That took about 2 hours of real time that included taking out the tools and jack... removing the stuff that is in the way. The second session was removing the valve cover, and then the front top cover.
Btw, the factory manual is totally worthless for information on this... ignore it.
Well the kicker comes in that you must remove the two top sprockets to get the chain off. Taking the tensioner out doesn't give you enough slack to lift the chain off (ain't no bicycle!). That's not too bad, because Nissan was smart enough to put some flats on the cam that you can put an open end wrench on. They will come in handy when you need to put the chain in the proper place during the install.
Well, the sprockets come off ok (breaker bar), and then the chain just hangs there... but... ummm... it won't come off!!
Why (pix to follow, if I get to it)? Well, in some automotive engineer's infinite wisdom they put a very nice rib in the casting running directly UNDER the lower apex of the lower sprocket!! Pure genius! So, there is NO WAY that the chain can go below the sprocket and slide off!
Great.
I tried taking the bolt out of the lower sprocket, although I was very worried about then tension of the lower chain pulling it down and making it impossible to get it back on again. BUT, that did not provide enough clearance either!
I figured, well, they would never design something that could not be taken out... so I took the dremel with a cutoff wheel and cut the top timing chain so that I could manoever the thing "properly" and get it to slide off, making more clearance for the next step (below)... but no, that didn't buy me anything either.
What I ended up doing is grabbing my trusty "Dremel" type tool, with the flex extension, a small milling tool in the end, and removing the g-d---n rib!! so that there was bloody clearance so that the chain could slip out!!
If your block is like this one, be sure to make a provision to keep the aluminum chips from getting down into the lower engine section.
I used a sock to stuff it, and a vacuum cleaner with a 1/2"OD hose taped to the suction end to suck chipz... worked fine.
So... after spending a few hours dorking with trying to get the chain off by legit means, I finally was able to merely slip the thing off...
If you subtract the 3-4 hours of dorking the stupid thing to try to get it off by "normal" means then my total time was more like 3-5 hours (depending on what you count).
No way is it a two hour job, unless you have some special magic tricks, at least on this car...
But anyhow the stupid thing runs ok now... now if I can figure out why it stalls on de-acceleration coming to a stop...
_-_-bearzbear
PS. disregard Mr. Haynes - no fluids to remove, unless you plan to take the bloody head off the engine!!
Last edited by bearzbear : Sep 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 AM.
ok am in the process of taking the lower tensioner out. Guy said at work its just a couple of bolts and that you may have to remove a belt. I finally found the bloody thing and guess what.....
The freaken thermostat housing sits right over it. So now I suppose I am gonna have to remove the housing or the lower tensioner will never come out.
Anyone have to do this before?? Am still gonna change the upper one as well and looked around....it doesnt seem all that bad to do. Looks easier than the lower one, but people are telling me its my lower one thats bad.....
Wow this is a great write up.... I am going to have to do this soon... I am starting to get that metal can rattling fomr my engine bay..... so my question is this does anyone have a part # to the tensioner?? I went to order it and the guy behind the counter looked at me like I had 3 heads....
I just replaced the upper tensioner on my '98 GXE, thanks to those that posted here! I discovered that my tensioner was worn pretty good. Most of the plastic was gone and the chain was getting close to the metal underneath the plastic. I have 138K miles on the car. I could sort of hear some noise before replacing this. I imagine that once the chain wears through the plastic and begins to rub the metal it would be noticeably louder.
Does anyone know how much the lower tensioner wears? Just curious how long I can expect the lower chain tensioner to last.
Pics of my upper timing chain tensioner with 138K miles on it.
You can see how much wear the plastic has suffered. Wow what a big difference with the new tensioner installed. The car is much smoother and quieter now!
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Try 8 hours...!!
I discovered that my tensioner was worn pretty good. Most of the plastic was gone and the chain was getting close to the metal underneath the plastic. I have 138K miles on the car. I could sort of hear some noise before replacing this. I imagine that once the chain wears through the plastic and begins to rub the metal it would be noticeably louder. 
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